Complex-Valued Convolutional Neural Networks Design and its Application on UAV DOA Estimation in Urban Environments

Direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is an important task in many unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications. However, the complicated electromagnetic wave propagation in urban environments substantially deteriorates the performance of many conventional model-driven DOA estimation approaches. To alleviate this, a deep learning based DOA estimation approach is proposed in this paper. Specifically, a complex-valued convolutional neural network (CCNN) is designed to fit the electromagnetic UAV signal with complex envelope better. In the CCNN design, we construct some mapping functions using quantum probabilities, and further analyze some factors which may impact the convergence of complex-valued neural networks. Numerical simulations show that the proposed CCNN converges faster than the real convolutional neural network, and the DOA estimation result is more accurate and robust.